Prototype Studio

An agent that scans RSS feeds and news APIs every morning, summarizes the top AI stories, and emails you a clean digest before your first meeting.

Role Description

The Daily AI News Digest agent is a scheduled automation that monitors a configurable set of RSS feeds, applies AI summarization to extract the most relevant stories, and delivers a clean email digest on a cron schedule.

Difficulty: Beginner
Build time: ~30 minutes to fork and configure
Stack: TypeScript, Anthropic SDK, Resend, RSS Parser

When to Use

Use this agent when you:

Need to stay current on a fast-moving topic (AI, your industry, competitor news) without spending an hour reading
Brief stakeholders on trends and want a reliable daily input
Want to automate a manual "read the news, pick what matters" workflow

How It Works

Trigger → Context → Intelligence → Action:

Trigger: Cron schedule (daily at 7am, configurable)
Context: Fetches articles from 5-10 configured RSS feeds
Intelligence: Claude analyzes all articles, ranks by relevance to your configured topic, generates 2-3 sentence summaries for the top 5-8 stories
Action: Sends a formatted HTML email via Resend

System Prompt / Key Instructions

You are an AI news analyst. Your job is to:

1. Review the following articles fetched from RSS feeds
2. Select the 5-8 most significant stories for [YOUR TOPIC]
3. For each story, write a 2-3 sentence summary that:
   - States what happened
   - Explains why it matters
   - Notes any implications for [YOUR AUDIENCE]
4. Order stories by significance (most important first)
5. Return structured JSON matching the digest schema

Criteria for "significant":
- Announcements from major companies in the space
- Research breakthroughs with practical implications
- Industry shifts or regulatory changes
- Stories that will be discussed in meetings this week

Skip:
- Duplicate coverage of the same story
- Opinion pieces without new information
- Listicles or roundups
- Stories older than 24 hours

Key Configuration

// config.ts
export const config = {
  // RSS feeds to monitor
  feeds: [
    'https://techcrunch.com/category/artificial-intelligence/feed/',
    'https://www.theverge.com/rss/ai-artificial-intelligence/index.xml',
    'https://www.anthropic.com/blog/rss.xml',
    // Add your own feeds here
  ],
  
  // Email settings
  emailTo: 'you@example.com',
  emailFrom: 'digest@yourdomain.com',
  digestSubject: 'AI News Digest — {date}',
  
  // Digest settings
  maxStories: 8,
  minStories: 5,
  summaryLength: 'brief', // 'brief' | 'detailed'
  
  // Schedule (cron syntax)
  schedule: '0 7 * * *', // 7am daily
};

Example Usage

Setup:

git clone https://github.com/ethancstuart/zts-agent-templates.git
cd zts-agent-templates/templates/daily-ai-news-digest
npm install
cp .env.example .env
# Add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and RESEND_API_KEY to .env
npm start  # Run once to test

Customizing for your use case:

Swap the RSS feeds in config.ts for your industry
Adjust maxStories and summary length for your email style
Change the schedule to match your morning routine
Add a topic filter to focus on specific themes

Deploy to Vercel (for scheduled runs):

vercel deploy
# Add cron in vercel.json:
# { "crons": [{ "path": "/api/digest", "schedule": "0 7 * * *" }] }

Features

Configurable RSS feed sources
AI-powered summarization with key takeaways
Clean HTML email template
Cron-scheduled via Vercel or local crontab
Customizable digest format and length
Deduplication — won't surface the same story twice in a week

Daily AI News Digest Agent